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Title: The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1) by Robert A. Caro ISBN: 0-679-72945-3 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 17 February, 1990 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.69 (59 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Great Book
Comment: Five stars does not do this book justice. Robert Caro's Path to Power is one of the best books I have ever read. Combining soaring prose with meticulous research, Mr. Caro paints a vivid picture of Lyndon Johnson, his contemporaries, and the places they called home, from Blanco County in the Texas Hill Country to the Dodge Hotel in Washington D.C. LBJ's family is also discussed in great deal, particularly his father, Sam Johnson, a worthy politico in his own right. Throughout the book, we see the dual nature of LBJ, from his genuine concern for Mexican students in Cotulla to his double dealing in Congress. No details are spared in this wonderful biography. Read it, and pass it along to your friends.
Rating: 4
Summary: A great read, but.....
Comment: This huge first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson tells the story of Johnson's life up to the time of his defeat in the Texas senatorial election of 1941.
I enjoyed the book very much, staying up late into the night to read more, yet having now finished it I thought that - somewhat perversely perhaps - the book's weaknesses as a biography were its strengths as a more general work of historical analysis.
Although the book is about Johnson, Caro doesn't restrain himself from letting his focus shift away from Johnson for long stretches: for example, the natural history and settlement of the Texas Hill Country are described in detail (fascinating to someone like me who knew next to nothing about these subjects); and the lives of other people who were important to Johnson are described in great detail (Sam Rayburn in particular).
I was happy to follow Caro down these roads, as he wrote so compellingly - for example, the descriptions of women's lives in the Hill Country should destroy a few rural myths. Other historians would have abbreviated or summarised such descriptions to the absolute minimum necessary to add to the reader's understanding of the context of the subject's life, whilst maintaining the overall focus on the subject himself. Indeed, at times, Caro loses sight of Johnson completely, and the book becomes more of a general history.
I felt that Caro made up his mind that Johnson was an utterly unscrupulous and amoral politician, totally devoted to the acquisition of power. The picture he paints of Johnson and of American democracy is unflattering - elections and politicians are there to be bought - money is everything. We're in a precursor stage to the "military-industrial complex". Even where Johnson did good, Caro's praise is brief (for example in his determination to force through the rural electrification program). I thought that there needed to be a better balance - surely there were issues other than money and gerrymandering that decided elections in the US? Or am I being naive?
Also, if Johnson the man was such a hated person, why did he evoke such loyalty? It seems too dismissive to explain this by stating that other people were furthering their own self-interest through Johnson.
I feel somewhat churlish at criticising a book I enjoyed so much, but I will read the next volume!
Rating: 5
Summary: He just HAD to be SOMEBODY!
Comment: This first volume of Robert Caro's award-winning series is absolutely fascinating, a riveting study of a supernaturally insecure and self-interested, manipulative unprincipled pragmatist. Being from Central Texas, as I child my only knowledge of LBJ involved the fact that my grandparents (from north of the Hill Country) worshipped him. I could see that LBJ talked like us, and wore boots like my relatives, but that was about it. Caro's account of Lyndon's self-promotional antics was unbelievably illuminating -- I immediately could see why so many (and many of them uneducated) folks adored him, and Caro reveals all that was happening behind the scenes. Lyndon's capacity to push himself forward and upward was often nauseating, and it's no wonder he had few true friends because contemporaries could always see beneath his manipulations. However, in adulthood he left all of his contemporaries behind with his patronage of the powerful and dominance of the powerless. The manner in which he treated those around him, those who worked for him, is eye-opening -- he subjugated them completely, demanding total loyalty regardless of his behavior toward them. He treat his own wife like dirt, ordering her around like a servant while conducting an affair practically in her presence. Commentator Molly Ivins, being a yellow-dog member of LBJ's own political party, complained that Caro did not treat Lyndon kindly in this book -- which is simply another way of saying that Caro was extremely honest, open, blunt and fascinating in this fine book. This may be the best biography you ever read (with or without adding the other volumes of the series).
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Title: Means of Ascent (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 2) by ROBERT A. CARO ISBN: 067973371X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 06 March, 1991 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro ISBN: 0394528360 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 23 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Power Broker : Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro ISBN: 0394720245 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 12 July, 1975 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Truman by David McCullough ISBN: 0671869205 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 14 June, 1993 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris ISBN: 0375756787 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 20 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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